Colin O'Brady on Climbing Mount Everest | Joe Rogan

what are my limits what are our limits collectively and can my physical expression of this inspire other people to innovate create and do amazing things in the world and other modalities and canvases well that's one of the weird things about people doing extraordinary things like what you did is that you absolutely will give other people fuel to accomplish things in their life inspiration is so critical for human beings I mean I draw upon it from so many different sources from David Goggins and a bunch of my other friends yet my friend Cameron Haines and a lot of other people that are endurance athletes and different people that have been interviewed on this podcast but there's something that happens when you realize that people can do extraordinary things it makes you believe in the potential not just in that person but also in yourself absolutely I mean you know gog is a great example that I've never met him but I know I've personally derived inspiration from that guy I mean he gets out there you know you can't run 100 miles like I'll show you I can run 100 miles you know and he's pushing this by two extreme ways or you know I love what he says about the 40% you know I think about a little bit different in my mind but like what are those limits I don't know if it's 40 percent or 30 percent people quit you know people quit that I can't voice comes up and you know he's proven it so as many other people of actually when you say I can actually when you don't stop you get stronger and for me in my own story in my own journey I think that final day that final final 32 hour push proves it three days before that you know I'm videotaping all this I'm trying to capture as much content to be able to share with people of this crazy weird place that's an article by yourself and like day 49 day 40 50 like I'm literally crying into my GoPro being like I'm running out of food I'm exhausted I don't know if I can keep doing this I'm just like worked right but sure enough I don't say I can't you know it's that for it was that 40% was that 50% that's that moment when I wanted to quit or I should have quit but then the strongest most amazing moment of my entire F let't career that spans decades happens three days later because I kept pushing it's not like I rested for three days and pulled that off like I never took a rest day in 54 days I pulled my sled 12 to 13 hours every single day and on the last day it was the strongest as possible so I think it proves if we can push through that I can't moment no it's not gonna work that you can get there and unfortunately you know we talked about 40% with Goggins I actually think a lot of people quit at 1% they're sitting behind their office they're like you know one day I want to travel overseas or you know I hate this job you know I've got this great at business idea but I mean it they're like but I can't like I've got no money to start this business I've gotta know this like when I first set off my first world record in 2016 2014 i sat with Jenna in my house one-bedroom apartment with a white board and we're like I'm gonna see if I can set the world record for the explorers Grand Slam something fewer than 50 people in the world I've ever done and I'm gonna be the fastest climb Everest come to naught like climb Kilimanjaro North Pole South Pole back to back I didn't climbed a bunch of mountains it'd be pretty easy to say I can't oh and by the way we have no money to do this we have no platform I have like 200 Instagram followers like nothing but we just sat there were like no instead of saying I can't let's say I can what's the first step to that we literally get out our laptops and I'm like going it like we're like we want to build this big media campaign where lots of people follow and get pressed like we know nothing about we have no background this week Google what's the difference between marketing and PR I mean we are literally asking Google like the most basic basic questions but you know we continue to say like let's get coffee with our one friend who knows something about this we should probably get a website how does one build a website and it goes on and on like this how long ago did you start this journey so that that was 24 when we 2014 when we dreamed that up this or the world record was C 5 years ago yeah so to see if I could set the world record for something called the explorers Grand Slam so it's coming tallest mountain on each of the seven continents seven summits and before that had you done anything like that or it just been athletics so I grew up in Portland so I grew up like in the outdoors but like I need to go climb Everest at Denali so I think no like the short answer is I mean I climbed a few mountains you know it's not like I've never been in the snow before I'd word crampons ice it's like I had not experienced but like not even close to the experience that you would think one would need to do that and to just break world record by doing not just be the fastest person to ever complete it you know like I said it ended up being a hunter in 39 days straight through to climb all those mountains didn't know I think we had a clip up a second ago of something on Everest but but yeah I mean to do to do all of that it started from this place of not believing I can and then you know it's again it's fun to talk about the epic adventure but we for me it's actually fun about what happened behind the scenes of that because what actually happened like people you know applaud our success now this is me this is you everest walking across a ladder that's the about 300 foot hole a crevasse on the other side of it that you have to go through to on your way up the the Mount Everest climbing route and so your crampons are clicking on the on the you're hooking them on the ladder as you walk across and if you fall you die yes watch this again this is so awful it's so awful look at because you're basically just walking this tightrope on let me hear it listen that click folks I implore you to go to the Instagram page so you get the full freaked out grab the pencils they're tied together to those ladders yeah rickety it's gonna be about 300-foot cavern over there oh [ __ ] all this Jesus and you're looking down because you ever go Prague and we cut the sound off at the end there but I go at the very I go because like there's 50 of those lives when I was cheering every [ __ ] time I got across I was like yeah in the Combe boys will actually go through that section a couple of times it's a very dangerous section of the mountain but yeah one about 50 of those ladders so when you went through Everest did you see the bodies so I fortunately didn't see any bodies up there fortunately or unfortunately fortunately I mean I mean I'm not like trying to see that by you know but they are they're more prevalent on the climbing route on the north side the day that I did summit three people died on the day that I summit is when I when I so to set that I mean to talk about Everest I mean for me is major setbacks it was the eighth of nine expeditions in this sequence so I'd done a hundred days of other expeditions leading up to Everest to do this explores Grand Slam World Record I'm trying to climb Everest I'm exhausted from a hundred days I just come from the North Pole before that Kilimanjaro before that you know Albert's all these other mountains and then I make my summit push on Everest I'm I'm not climbing with a guide or anything it's just myself and one Sherpa who I met climbing in Nepal the Year previous when I was training for this and so it's just the two of us and we climb up into camp for so ever says you know four camps there's base camp and then there's camps progressively higher in the mountain so you can get your body climate eyes and we get up into camp for have you read the book into thin air by Jon Krakauer or anything about it I say okay there's a famous book that's written about it where eleven people die and right in this moment it's called the Death Zone where you enter above 26,000 feet the human body basically can't survive for long even with supplemental oxygen and this massive snowstorm and wind storm blows in like kind of out of nowhere and we're trying to push for the summit it takes us two and a half hours just to set up our tent and get inside and we know like it's over like we're not we're not going to summit our first like in this storm there's no way so we just survive the night wake up the next morning still getting pounded by this weather and actually have to climb back down the mountain so climb back down the mountain all the way to Camp two and they're looking like well that's probably it like you don't usually like spend a night out in the Death Zone and like make a second attempt and you've already tried all these other mountains you're a hundred plus days in this journey and I was like man I want to see if I can get back up there like and this other guy who I met on another team had some supplemental oxygen so I had to use some my supplement auction so my pill supply stores are limited now as well and so he he says to me hey I'm not going to go up I'm sick but if you get back up to camp four there's a couple bottles of oxygen that you could use of mine if you if you somehow get back up there so sure enough pasang bhote is name is shir palace climbing with amazing climber himself we get back up to camp four in the Death Zone and we decide we're gonna go for the summit we call back down to base camp what's the weather forecast and they're like well it's the exact same forecast we told you before it might hold in which case you'll be fine or it might turn into what you guys just survived and if you're not near your tent and you're up on the summit ridge of Everest like it's gonna get like pretty bad and so we kind of go back and forth should we go for it shouldn't we go for it we decide to go for it but this crazy thing happens which is you may have read about this or heard of this if you know much about Everest but basically no one climbed Everest in 2014 or 15 because a huge avalanche killed 16 sharpers in 2014 the mountain was closed and in 2015 there was a huge earthquake in Nepal that shut the climbing season down so no one's even climbed the mountain in two years but all of a sudden because of these weather delays I end up there and there's a hundred people going for the summit on the exact same day so basically traffic jam on the worst place to fear the traffic jam possible so pasang Bodhi and I we go okay let's figure out how to climb this thing and we leave camp you know there's a photo that took the leaving camp there's all these lights going up side of the mountain and it's because there's one rope that everyone works to put in so everyone's using the same rope and all of a sudden we're behind a hundred people and if you stand there windchill minus forty degrees like we're gonna get frostbite like we're gonna not be able to make it and so pasang Bodi and I look at each airman go let's unclip from the rope and so we actually decide to we actually decide to unclip from the rope climb up all the way to the balcony from the the South Col the death stone area was mentioning before up to about 28,000 feet on rope because we actually think it's more dangerous to climb roped next to all the behind all the people than it is to risk a fall but you don't know those people right I know what they're like and people are mean you're on Everest at 28,000 feet and people are walking I mean one step per minute sometimes I mean it's it is brutal and so I mean I'm walking maybe two steps every 30 seconds but I'm like Usain Bolt like flying people is an example of like so you're in it like the world the worst place in the world to be you know in a in a traffic jam as you could see here from this photo I posted that day but anyways I get up to this edge and it finally it's too steep it's too dangerous for us to be unclip from the rope any longer we're like we're just gonna have to clip in and settle in behind you know we'd pass like 50 or 60 people so we're in a much better place than ever I still have this one big puffy coat that's actually the same puffy coat I used in Antarctica the big like Michelin Man coat and I'm like we're gonna slow down I better put this big jacket on and so I take my jacket off I undo my gloves real quick to put this big jacket on over me to warm myself up and I look down and my right hand is black like just black is black can be and I'm like holy [ __ ] like telltale sign of frostbite like oh my god like the same thing we've got school kits following along we got family fun the whole thing and I'm like oh my god like I'm gonna lose my right hand it's Jenna still gonna love me you know what's my family gonna think and then I don't say anything to purr saying bode I Jam my hand back in these big gloves and I go okay and I don't I don't recommend this thought process but I go well if I'm gonna lose my hand anyways wouldn't it be cooler to lose my hand but also have summited Everest so how black was it I mean it was black like black black like I was crying yes like he was black did you take a picture of it so so the Sun had was just still the Sun was just below the horizon so it's like dusk and I look down at this point and then the Sun comes up so I Jam my hand back in this club and I don't say anything to pass a podium like let's keep pushing for the summit so we go for the next three hours and the whole time I mind I'm like oh my god I'm such an idiot like I'm gonna lose my hand my hands frostbit and this and that and so we get up and we're about 30 minutes below Mount Everest summit and should be a beautiful moment for me like since a little kid I dream like summiting Everest would be like the greatest accomplishment of my life oh my god and I'm thinking like just in this dark place but I also haven't taken a single photo basically and I'm like well I gotta get like a photo or a video of you know the famous Mount Everest summit so I pull up my GoPro to shoot a video I shoot this short little video which kind of shows this crazy exposure that I'm on like one side 5,000 feet down into China on one side 5,000 feet in Nepal in this tiny little knife-edged Ridge and of course I have to adjust my gloves again yeah this is from the summit and I pull my I pull my GoPro out I have to mess with my gloves put it back in and I look at my hand I start going away from my arms in the air go pasang Bodi my hands back my heads back and he's like what are you doing it just so happened that the the glove warmers in my glove the chemical hand warmers had broken open and the charcoal and the copper filings of the chemical hand warmers had tied my hand Lac oh my head was completely fine oh good so yeah this clip here if you play from the top is me reaching the summit that's passaic Bodi right there but so when so yeah what did you experience any discomfort in your hands before so you're again we're talking about a lot of this podcasts been about mindset which is one of my favorite topics and like just like we said you could convince yourself that the salt man is fixing your foot like I'm on Everest I'm at 28,000 feet my brains not working very well I know that the weather's coming in bad that people are going to get maybe frostbite based on the forecast and I look down and I see my hands black where does my mind go it's like it's not like oh let me think about this my hand-warmer must have broken open and this I'm like my hand and that it was weird cuz I was like I didn't feel my hand getting cold my hand like feels fine but I'm on Everest my hands black that means you know in my brain I'm like I have frostbite so it's just like it's a weird thing where you can take your mind like this a lot of this that the positivity of this my mom went to the negative immediately like your hands gone it's frozen off like the end so it happened to the people that died were they on the rope yeah so unfortunately that day the weather actually did get pretty bad later in the day so fortunately I was able to get down before the weather got too bad but the people that died that day one slipped and fell down these ropes over on load C which is the adjacent mountain but similar sharing some of the same ropes on the same route and then two people died from altitude sickness so basically either running out of oxygen they're not be able to get back down in their tent I think those people actually did get carried back down to their tents that night and then died in the tent that night some it's called cerebral edema which is basically your brain fills with fluid from being at the high altitude and not getting enough oxygen and it's a it's a killer up there and you know one of the crazy things about being up there is you know you read about it but you really can't rescue somebody very easily up there I mean to carry a human body down it to rescue them is is nearly impossible and I kind of always thought in my mind you know if I saw somebody lying on the ground like I would you know summon the energy to pick them up and I was actually coming back from the summit and I was on the South Summit so just below the Everest summit you know at 28,000 800 feet or something like that and this Brazilian woman who I had met in base camp named Tice who I've become friends with you're in Nepal for a couple months you start talking to people getting friends with other climbers whatever and I see her lying on the ground with her head like lean back in her oxygen mask off to the side and I'm like oh my god like this is the moment that I'm most feared like somebody who I know I was lying here on the side of the mountain and I think to myself I've got to pick her up I've got to pick her up and somehow like carry her down this mountain and I lean over to grab her and I try with all my might to do anything and I realized I can't move her six inches like I'm completely exhausted muscles aren't working brains not working so I do the only thing I can think to do is I just wrap her in my arms and I say Tice like if you can hear me it's calling you need to get up you need to get your oxygen mask on you need to start moving like please get up please get up no response she was climbing with a Sherpa another guide right next to her and they were like look like we're having trouble with her oxygen mask but we're gonna fix it like it's coming alright and I was like just kind of going through this intense moment like what do i do how can I help and it's as weirdest you know I'm not proud of it necessary to say but like there was nothing I could do like it's just the most helpless feeling in the world where you want to help the common person you a friend mean this person might be a friend but if any human being is lying on the ground in the snow you're like I want to help this person get down this mountain and I was just I'm so close to on my limit up there in the summit there was nothing I could do fortunately she was not one of the people that passed away that day her team did get her oxygen mask on her and she actually made it to the summit and back down safely Wow so she went up going up from there which to me is like another whole crazy part of that story but it was an interesting lesson for me in like you know you hear these stories you can't move bodies up there there's nothing you can do the rescue and people have been criticized for not you know doing these crazy rescues when things have gone wrong up there but it really hit home for me like how how hard it would be to move somebody down that mountain from that altitude and so when you're up there you know unlike you know Antarctica I was actually alone in Everest like I said it was pretty crowded day like you're essentially alone up there like if you can't keep putting one foot in front of the other up in the Death Zone there's not not a whole lot that you can do so the three people that died up did they leave them there I'm not sure with those specific people because sometimes they what you can get like a large team of people to slowly lower people down and you know in a weird way it's actually easier to lower a dead body than it is to lower a live person because a dead body you don't have to worry about breaking bones and things like that if you're lowing someone over rocks and things like that yeah so I actually believe those bodies are no longer there but there are quite a few bodies you know still on the mountain and particularly the north side the Chinese says you can climb it from two sides the Nepal side which is more commonly climb where I climb but the Tibet side the Tibet side is known for having a lot more of the bodies still actually on the climbing route for sure so but for me on that I mean that day in a crazy way continues on because I got back down to camp four and I'm thinking I'm going to sleep for the night rest and come back down the mountain usually takes a few days to get back down the and at this point you know I've only got one more mountain to climb to can finish my world record the explorers Grand Slam and I was about two months ahead of schedule so if I had climbed Denali in the next two months North America's tallest mountain up in Alaska I was going to set this world this world record that I was and so I called back home to Jenna and I was like I made it like I made it and earlier in the day when my hands had gotten frozen I had actually had a heated boot warmers and so I turned the heat and my boot warmers up as hot as possible so I'm like if my hand is frostbit and what my feet look like so I cranked those up as hot as possible and so Jenna's like hey like how you doing like you all right we've heard some you know reports over social media that it's been a really hard day up there like I'm like yeah I'm all right like no frostbite no injuries like I'm good and I was like well actually um I I burned my feet and she's like Oh frostbite like how bad is it now it's like no not frostbite I actually burned to like silver dollar circles in the bottom two both of my feet from starting my boot warmers up too much and she's like wait let me get this straight like you climb Everest you don't get frostbite but you burn yourself she was like you your feet fire like this is a bad situation but that she goes on and she was like she literally said the next thing you said to me I will literally never forget in my life but she goes so you're in your tent right you took your boots off and everything and curled up in there and like yeah and she's like well I actually need you to put your boots back on I'm like excuse me like I just what like she was like yeah so we've been doing some calculating back home and it just so happens that if you can get to the summit of Denali in the next a week you can set not one but two world records and I was like well that sounds nice but like I'm on the summit of below the summit of Everest how the hell is that gonna work she's like okay put your boots back on down now climb all the way back to base camp there's no time for you to sleep but a helicopter is gonna take you to Kathmandu no time for a hotel no time for a shower but an evening flight it's gonna take you to Dubai to Seattle to Anchorage and instead of having three weeks to climb Denali you'll have three days but if you can do all of that you'll set another world record like ready go so I was it disbelief but knowing better than to disobey not only my amazing wife but the planner and logistics expert and running the background all this I sure enough put my boots back on wipe the slate clean and found myself you know just a hundred hours after standing on the summit of Everest I found myself over in Alaska trying to push up to the summit to to try to set the two world records and not just the one

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Id: LdUav0AoDfM

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019